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VoicesNet Visions Literary Journal - Issue 21 - June 20, 2004 - sent to 37,059 members

VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY by George Tokarev, Ph.D. - Tsfat, Israel

A few facts to begin with: When Vladimir Vysotsky died at the age of 42 in 1980 about half a million people came to his funeral—this number is not exact, there are sources claiming that there were more than a million people.

In 1974 Soviet astronomers discovered a new planet which is registered under number 2374 in the International Planetary Catalogue. In 1983 this newly discovered planet was given the name Vladvysotsky.

In Norway there lives a singer named Jorn Simen Overli. He's giving concerts, releasing CDs, leading a routine life of an ordinary professional artist. Just one thing separates him from the others; Jorn Simen Overli performs only the songs written by Vladimir Vysotsky which he translates into Norwegian through the English word-for-word transliteration. A couple of months ago, Jorn Overli's website informed the visitors about 1,500 concerts given all around the world.

On the Argentine island, Tierra del Fuego there is the Vysotsky plateau, which spreads right after the Mozart volcano. Besides this plateau, several mountain peaks and passes in Central Asia and in Siberia also carry the name of Vladimir Vysotsky. Two ships are named after him as well, not to mention dozens of streets and squares in numerous cities and towns. Russian President Putin officially announced the year 2003 as "The year of Vysotsky" in Russia.

Why all these honors? Was Vladimir Vysotsky a great statesman or a victor in a war? He was neither. He just wrote songs and sang them to us.

Haven't you heard? They say that poetry in our modern world is almost dead? Haven't you witnessed poetry being ousted by other forms of art, mainly by pop music and movies from our everyday life?

If you have heard, then it's an illusion. The life and fate of Vladimir Vysotsky proves that real poetry is in great demand, it’s just that a true poetic genius is a very rare occurrence.

Vysotsky started writing and singing his own songs in the very beginning of 1960s exactly when The Beatles appeared. In a way, the Vysotsky phenomenon is absolutely identical to that of John Lennon or Bob Dylan. (Curious coincidence—both Vladimir Vysotsky and John Lennon left this world in 1980). All of them were bards, Lennon with the Beatles made a musical breakthrough in his form of art and Vladimir Vysotsky, being an unrivaled singer and a very original and prolific composer, reached the Shakespearean heights in poetry. The Beatles conquered the world easily and swiftly as their art is universally understood and directly perceived in any corner of our planet.

Vysotsky, his main merit being the word, was not as lucky as the four Englishmen. Vysotsky has to be translated to English and, needless to say, the way Vysotsky is accepted in the world beyond Russia is dependent on the quality of these translations.

There's another difference between Vysotsky and the Beatles. The latter were four, the former was one. The Britts had all of the show business industry behind them, all of the mass media behind them and the big money behind them. The Russian was alone against the monstrous political regime in the U.S.S.R.; alone against suffocating bureaucratic laws and regulations in the Soviet social and cultural life; alone against a giant gang of envious and mean professional literary and musical prostitutes who despised him as a pariah; alone against a poor, dull, boring everyday life. But like an icebreaker, Vladimir Vysotsky crushed concrete walls of prohibitions and contempt, though he paid for this breakthrough with his life.

Vysotsky was not just the author of excellent poetic texts but he created a unique poetic world where he reflected the real life of the whole country in the 1960s and 1970s. If anybody wants to learn about the Soviet Union during those days, one of the most effective ways to do this is to listen to the Vysotsky songs. These songs (Vysotsky created about 600 of them) are a poetic encyclopedia of the society where he happened to live. Apart from this incredibly detailed imagery, which can't be found in any other works of any other poet, there is another peculiarity in the Vysotsky songs; very often he puts on a mask of a certain character and acts out a mini spectacle (if I am not mistaken, the Beatles did this only twice – in "Paperback Writer" and "Yellow Submarine"). To enlist all characters, animated by Vysotsky in his songs, is practically impossible, at least in this article. Just to mention a few, he used to be a pirate, a prehistoric savage, a knight, a soldier, a sailor, a blacksmith, a peasant, a mountain climber, a coalminer, a sportsman, a skydiver, a pilot, a thieve, a gangster and a truck driver! More than that, often Vysotsky would turn into animals and objects; he used to be a horse, a wolf, a parrot, an eagle, a plane and a ship! In one of his songs he even sang on behalf of a microphone!

Of course, this mere enumeration can't explain the tremendous success of Vladimir Vysotsky among ordinary people. The secret here lies in the unparalleled poetic skills and vocabulary mastership, when Vysotsky doesn't just write a line but he joggles with the word, exploits its most unexpected and hidden meaning, constructs most surprising plots and crowns them with brilliant aphorisms; all this being done easily, freely, without any lexical tension or awkwardness, using the same language people use in their everyday linguistic communication.

Today one can hardly find any Russian newspaper or magazine without headlines, quoting Vysotsky directly or indirectly. Some of his songs totally disintegrated into separate lines which are now frequently used as proverbs, sayings and maxims.

All of these factors I've mentioned so far belong to art itself. There was another non-artistic factor to be considered when talking about the Vysotsky phenomenon. Vysotsky undermined the total KGB iron control over the Soviet society. Can you imagine, that in those days a Soviet citizen could possess a simple typing machine only after getting KGB permission for it and registering it there? That was so out of a paranoid fear by the communist regime of any free word; any free exchange of information between people. Any mass communication was strictly regulated and watched by the authorities.

The Soviet power made one fatal error, it overlooked (or didn't pay enough attention to) personal tape recorders. The ability of these small machines to dub and re-dub information without any official control was the first nail into the coffin of the totalitarian Soviet system. That was exactly how Vysotsky became popular all over the country. He would sing a song in front of his tape recorder at home, the next day this homemade recording would start circulating among Vysotsky’s personal friends, each of whom would pass the record to tens of his own friends and in a week the whole country would be listening to another song. The record quality was awful and very little was left of the original quality after re-dubbing, but with great attention words could still be understood.

It's funny to say, but for this outstanding poetic genius, writing songs was just a hobby, at least in the first period of his creative activity. He became so popular so fast that the authorities, soon after the appearance of the first songs, could do nothing to him, could not kill him or put him in jail. So they chose different tactics. Vysotsky, being the most popular and loved person in the country, officially didn't exist! He was ignored and boycotted by the regime, he had no access to radio, TV, record studios, etc. Not a single line of his marvelous poetry was ever published by the official presses. The Union of Soviet Writers rejected his application twice. Even when Vladimir Vysotsky died, not a single word was said about this loss in the official mass media!

This amateurish Shakespeare of our time earned his living as an actor. He played in the Taganka theatre in Moscow, the most advanced Soviet theatre of the 1970s. To a great extent the immense popularity of this theatre was due to Vysotsky working there.

This legendary man was the first Soviet citizen to marry a foreigner! In the Stalin era, a law was adopted in the Soviet Union which forbade ordinary people from marrying foreigners. Vysotsky didn't care for it at all. When a French movie star named Marina Vladi appeared in Moscow in 1968 at one of the film festivals, Vysotsky came up to her and simply said, "You will be my wife!". After two years, they were married.

Until the death of Vysotsky, Marina Vladi was his muse and protector. She organized an unofficial tour of Vysotsky over the USA and Canada in 1979 when he was singing in Hollywood to the movie stars and later was hosted on the "60 minutes" TV program.

It is now time for America (and all the English speaking world) to be acquainted with Vysotsky through English translations.

The idea of translating Vysotsky into English came to me rather unexpectedly. Back in 1975 as a student of the Institute of the Foreign Languages in Alma-Ata, I met an American named Bob Titterton. Bob was visiting the Soviet Union with a student delegation from the States which was the first and, as far as I know, the last of its kind in the 1970s.

Bob's impression of the USSR was rather negative due to two main factors. First, his suitcase was stolen in Kiev in the beginning of the tour and second, he didn't like the taste of the Soviet beer.

When we started writing letters to each other there was not a single letter from Bob where he wouldn't again and again mention the superiority of the American beer over that swill he had previously drunk in the USSR. That was true, I had no counter arguments. I would desperately think of something that could beat America. I could find nothing. But then the idea struck me. Vysotsky! Do they have anything of the kind in the States? For Bob to believe in the genius of Vysotsky, I had to adequately translate what Vysotsky had created. That is how my translations started.

Today Bob Titterton, being the official editor of my translations, helps me spread the word of Vysotsky to others. Since these texts are songs from the very beginning, I decided to translate them in such a way that they could be sung in English.

My main task has always been to preserve the metric pattern of the song, the melodic structure, the rhyming scheme. That is very difficult, but sleepless nights make it possible.

For a very long time I was looking for a proper singer in the United States, Canada or England to perform these songs. I had dozens of contacts with various artists until I found the right solution in Sweden. These days Michael Ohlsson and his "Hagen" band mates are completing the recording of a full format CD with the Vysotsky songs. Judging by the working records I get from them, the Swedes are preparing something absolutely wonderful!

I have translated 131 songs so far. I practically translated all of the songs that could be performed by a singer without any additional explanations. The rest of the Vysotsky translations need some commentaries, footnotes, introductions, etc. to be fully and rightly understood in the Western world. Thus, in addition to the CD version, Vysotsky has to be released in print as well, where I can help readers understand the content.

That is why I contacted some presses and publishing houses in search of the one who would take on this business. I was lucky to contact the VoicesNet founder, Jeff Humphrey, who has allowed me to present information about Vladimir Vysotsky to all of you.

The proof of the pudding is in it its eating. Let's now eat some pudding. Read a couple of the Vysotsky songs which I have recently translated.

Copyright 2004

1st Edit: Melyssa Sprott

VoicesNet Visions Literary Journal
Executive Editor: Jeff Humphrey - Managing Editor: Melyssa Sprott Copyright 2004